Our approach is not simply to “represent" our clients but to understand their businesses and to know their industries as well as they do. We do this so we are not presenting legal advice in a vacuum but rather with the understanding of how it will affect their bottom line. When they grow, we grow.

Over the years we have steadily built our practices and expanded to key markets. We have a compendium of knowledge and experience that cannot be gleaned from a textbook or from handling a deal or two. It has been forged by years of experience, by senior partners guiding new partners who in turn train associates. When a Proskauer lawyer is on the case, he or she is supported by decades of experience, knowledge and insight.

Take private investment funds. It's a relatively new field, but even so, our experience goes back decades. It is also a practice that we have embraced and expanded in direct proportion to our clients' success and growth. The co-head of our practice not only knows the industry, she lives and breathes it. In fact, Chambers USA calls her a “star.” It is not unusual for her to pick up the phone on a Friday afternoon and call clients for one purpose—to talk about the industry, share information, discuss trends, hear concerns, and commiserate about proposed changes in the industry that keep her clients up at night. Because if they are up at night, so is she—looking for ways to help our clients become more successful.

Or take sports law. One of the reasons we’ve been named the #1 sports practice in the nation and are consistently ranked in the #1 tier by the leading legal guides is that we practically invented the practice. Sports law combines myriad areas of the law, including finance, litigation, M&A, labor, tax, media, construction, licensing, antitrust, intellectual property and ADA compliance, among many other areas. So when we head off to represent a team or a league we make it our business to know their business—everything from TV rights and licensing, stadium financing and construction, player contracts and collective bargaining agreements down to the peanut sales at the concession stands and everything in between.

We also are known for our labor & employment law practice, which was born amid the turbulent labor strife of the 1930s. When we take on a matter, we walk in not only with knowledge of the underlying issues but with a solid understanding of both sides’ wants, needs and desires. We understand management and we understand unions. We know what will kill a negotiation and what will advance it. We know when to talk and when to listen. We know when to dig in and we know when to bend. You can’t learn that from a textbook.

At Proskauer, it all began in 1875 when 21-year old William Rose, newly admitted to the New York bar, opened his practice in lower Manhattan. He started out with a small, general practice, as many young lawyers do, and before long he was handling matters for many of the city’s small businesses. Over the years he brought in a number of partners as his reputation for working diligently and delivering stellar work for his clients led to assignments on behalf of many of New York’s retail giants. Soon he was handling personal matters and estate work for the families of those retail giants.

In 1939, we started what would become one of our signature practices—Labor & Employment. For more than 70 years, the firm has been synonymous with this area of the law, representing some of the nation’s largest employers. In 1963, we began representing the National Basketball Association. And we still do—along with the National Hockey League, the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer, among many other leagues and teams. In 2011, U.S News-Best Lawyers named Proskauer as its first “Law Firm of the Year” in both Sports Law and Employment Law.

We continued to grow in the U.S. and around the globe to meet the needs of our clients, including in the key financial centers of the world, and now have 13 offices. The scope of our work has grown as well, propelling us from a “New York sports and labor firm” to a firm that has made an impact in a wide array of industries, including financial services, health care, entertainment and media, advertising, lodging & gaming, insurance, and life sciences.

It would be clichéd to say we’ve come a long way from the small firm William Rose started more than a century ago. It also would not be accurate. For as much as we have changed in terms of growth and scope, in many ways we operate guided by the same principles that started our founder on the road to success—working diligently and turning in superior work on behalf of every single client we represent­­—and that’s a tradition we plan to continue